Police officers regularly protect the people in their communities from harm, even when the source of that harm isn’t another person, but themselves.

A cop in Columbia, South Carolina, kept a man from jumping off a bridge into traffic and committing suicide last Saturday by simply talking to him about something they had in common — football.

The suicidal man was sitting on the bridge around 3:45 a.m., ready to jump to his death, when Officer Michael Blackmore approached him and carefully persuaded him to preserve his life, according to The Columbia State.

It only took the heroic officer a little over eight minutes to convince the man to come down from the guardrail, and he did so by calmly discussing football.

Another officer’s body camera captured the entire situation between Blackmore and the suicidal man who tearfully told the cop he was tired of living.

“You’re just probably having a bad night, bud. I have bad nights, too, sometimes,” Blackmore told him before asking more about the man’s life.

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When he found out that the man was football fan, particularly of the South Carolina Gamecocks and the Washington Redskins, the officer talked to him specifically about that in an effort to remind the man of happy times in his life.

“(T)omorrow night, when you’re sitting around and you’re watching the Gamecocks — or on Sunday when you’re watching the Redskins play or whatever — you’ll look back and be like, ‘Man, what was I thinking Friday night?’ You’re just having a bad night,” Blackmore said.

The two discussed football for a few more minutes before the man allowed the officer, with the help of others, to pull him over the guardrail to safety.

This wasn’t the first time Blackmore had chatted with a suicidal person about football in a successful effort to save their life, and the last time wasn’t too long ago.